My hand left his head, which had lodged in me as if it might never move—a thought that filled me with a new level of horror. Wailing, I kicked at one of the leather bags of poultice, wedged it under my heel, and dragged it to my hand. Groaning with its weight, I dumped the sludgy green contents over the side of the boat. One hand still on the tiller, I bailed water with the empty leather bag. Ridiculous. I couldn’t keep up. In agony, I dragged the other bags under me, lifting my pelvis higher than the gunwale, but could no longer bail from this position. Water poured into my mouth, ears, nose, eyes; the sky pummeled me with its hard water fists, my hips ached and split, I was giving birth into a vast vault of clouds.

I had to let go of the tiller. This boy wanted all of me. Any second he would be born head down into the brown lake that lapped at the sides of the canoe. But to lose the tiller meant we would go spinning into madness, we would lose the bank and any sense of where we were, any hope of getting home. Knees bent, heels jammed under the bags, I held my hand at his crown and bit at tiny sips of air, refusing to push, though every cell in my body screamed get him out get him out get him out! I kicked the last bag under my pelvis, gaining two inches and just a few seconds more. Lianas dragged across my convulsing body from overhanging trees. I tried to time it. Between contractions, I lifted my arm and dragged my hand across the curtain of green ropes. I yanked one of them free, wound it around the stuttering motor, then lashed it to the seat, anchoring the tiller in place. The boat jigged and jagged, but stayed steady in the current as it made its miserable progress forward.

My guts twisted, wringing themselves out like a dishrag. No force on earth would stop him now, no filling boat, no will of mine, nothing. Bands of muscle in my gut cinched and relaxed in one final wave, pain a white devil in my head. I felt the box of my pelvis drop open, my bones soften and separate. My body was turning itself inside out. Gulping equal parts air and water, I dropped my head back on the bag of green sludge and cried out for Omar, knowing we might both be with him soon. My eyes bugged in my head; I saw nothing but a green ocean in the sky. The water between my legs gushed red. I reached down with both hands to catch him just as the liana stretched and snapped, freeing the tiller. The boat turned in a wide, slow circle. I rode a fresh wave of torment, my screams joining with the riotous songs of morning, the spider monkeys, the macaws shrieking their loathing of the day, as he gushed out of me crying his first tears, slippery and warm and covered with my blood.